Support grows among non-Catholics for the beatification of John Paul II

From the Washington Times:

The Vatican reports that support for the beatification of Pope John Paul II is coming from Protestants, non-Christians and even agnostics.

"They come from people who say they are agnostics, non-believers, even Muslims, Buddhists or Hindus," Joaqin Navarro-Valls, a spokesman for the Vatican, told the Italian news agency ANSA. "They say that they would like their testimony to be officially recognized by the church."

On one hand, this all seems very heartwarming and lovely. On the other hand, if you aren't a Catholic — and thus, at least implicitly, don't adhere to many or most Catholic beliefs — why would you insist that your testimony be officially recognized by the Church? Not to sound cynical, but this sounds a bit self-serving and confused. After all, if you are a "non-believer," why would you report that you believe a miracle happened? However, God works in mysterious ways, and, perhaps, to (very loosely) paraphrase the Catechism, the Church has bound beatification to authentic miracles, but has not limited reports of those miracles to Catholics (cf. CCC 1257).

Comments

[BP]

At the same time, if their testimony is "JPII helped me get to know Shiva better," then I think we can skip getting it in triplicate (and let's just take a step back from accomodating ourselves into a world religion, instead of the universal faith).

It's interesting, not to invest too much in a short article, that the only miracles reported by non-Catholic are by an Anglican and an Orthodox, which makes a whole lot of sense.

[Cristina A. Montes]

Another consideration: a testimony by a non-believer to a miracle might be even more credible, because he would have no motive to pretend that a miracle actually happened. If a person whom I know does not believe in miracles suddenly insists sincerely that he thinks one has happened, I would be inclined to believe that a miracle actually happened. Of course, this is assuming that the non-believer in question is not dishonest nor gullible.

[Owen]

Very generally speaking, people who are not Catholic {and I was not long ago} love JPII and want to see him sainted while, ironically?, many Catholics opposed him even as they now oppose our present pope on essentials of the faith and, especially those pertaining to matters of upholding a culture of life. We are a selfish and relativistic lot we humans who are most passionate about the merits of being highly subjective as is most convenient.

That said, I have no difficulty believing that the Blessed and Saints of God would dispense miracles and grace to non-Catholics because God certainly does.

[Ed Peters]

You know, O (forgive the familiarity), but I really don't think there are many Catholics actually opposed to JP2's canonization--the ones who are, are disproportioantely voiciferous, I grant, but most RCs would be at least mildly in favor of it. Of course, they see no inconsistency between that stance, and ignoring what JP2 taught on many things, but that's a different question.

[Jane]

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